© 2004 by Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland

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First published 2004 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kovacs, Judith L., 1945–
Revelation: the apocalypse of Jesus Christ / Judith Kovacs and
Christopher Rowland; in collaboration with Rebekah Callow.
p. cm. – (Blackwell Bible commentaries)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-631-23214-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN
0-631-23215-X (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Bible. N.T. Revelation–Criticism, interpretation, etc. I.
Rowland, Christopher, 1947– II. Callow, Rebekah. III. Title. IV.
Series.
BS2825.52.K69 2004
228¢.07–dc22
2003018705
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The editor and publisher wish to thank the following for permission to
use copyright material. McGinn, B., Visions of the End, Apocalyptic
Traditions in the Middle Ages. © 1998 Columbia University Press.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
 Revelatio

n
5
Ancient Literary Context

This chapter has its closest analogies in visions such as those of Dan
7–8, where beasts represent world empires, a feature taken up later in
Rev 13 and 17. In the present chapter, however, the beast, the Lamb,
intrudes into the heavenly scene as agent, not object, of judgement. In
Jewish apocalypses there are several types of vision (J. J. Collins
1984): a report by the seer of what he has seen in heaven, usually
after a mystical ascent (e.g. 1 Enoch 14), communication to the seer
of divine secrets by an angel, with no vision account (as in 2 Esdras),
and the dream vision in which the seer sees various objects (often
animals) which are explained afterwards by an angel (Dan 7 and 1
Enoch 89–90).
In the Jewish apocalypses the dream-vision, with its extravagant
symbols and interpretation, is not usually merged with the heavenly
ascent vision, as it is in Rev 4–5. The vision in Rev 4 is a good
example of the first type of vision, but in Rev 5 language more typical
of the symbolic vision (cf. Dan 7) is intro duced into the heavenly
vision. The use of animal imagery resembles 1 Enoch
70 Revelation 5

89–90, where animals represent humans. The awkwardness created

by this combination, and also in the juxtaposition of the Lion and the
Lamb in 5:4–5, point to the unique eschatological reality to which John
seeks to bear witness. The Lamb has affected the normal apocalyptic
conventions, and hitherto accepted patterns of discourse are shattered
along with the understanding
and course of history. The Lion of the tribe of Judah echoes Num
23:24, Mic 5:8 and Gen 49:9. Also relevant is 2 Esdras 11, where a
lion reproves and destroys a great eagle, which represents the wicked
power of Rome (11:37–12:3).

The Interpretations

Modern exegesis of this chapter almost universally regards it as the

pivotal moment in the vision, in which history finds its meaning in the
heavenly vin dication of the Lamb that was slain. Ancient
commentators like Victorinus said the same (1916: 60.10; 64.6–11).
This chapter is important for another reason, because it is what gives
a uniquely christological perspective to the apocalyp tic scenes in the
rest of the book (Caird 1966: 73; Massyngberde-Ford 1975, who
claims the Apocalypse is essentially a Jewish vision, is an exception to
this consensus; Barker 2000, on the other hand, thinks that the
Apocalypse was a vision of Jesus himself). The theological
significance attributed to this chapter is well illustrated by
interpretations of the sealed book in 5:1. John’s expres sion of grief
(5:4, a rare moment when the impact on the visionary is noted)
dramatizes the closed nature of the book. The seer’s sadness is
answered by a vision of the Lamb, who, he hears, is none other than
the Lion of the tribe of Judah. What John hears is interpreted by what
he sees. The fierce lion turns out to be a lamb. The christological
significance of this is explored to the full by interpreters.

The sealed scroll (5:1)

Many are the speculations about the scroll (book) of 5:1, sometimes
connected with the ‘open scroll’ of the angel in 10:8. Victorinus
regarded the sealed book ‘written within and without’ as the Old
Testament (1916: 64.6–9); the opening of the seals is the revelation of
its true contents though Christ’s death and
resurrection. The four living creatures and the 24 elders in 5:8–9
represent both the new and the old covenants, which join together in
singing a new song.
Revelation 5 71
This song (5:9–11) indicates that with the incarnation, resurrection,
seal of the Spirit and expectation of the kingdom, the new age has
begun (1916: 66.2–11). The unsealing also points forward to the
second coming of Christ (1916: 66.18–20) to which the message of
the divine spirit, the rider on the white horse in 6:1–2, bears witness
(1916: 68.1–13; ANF vii.350).
For Bullinger the sealed book contains ‘all the counsels of God, all
his works and judgements’, sealed because the meaning of historical
events is hidden from the world (A Hundred Sermons 159 in
Bauckham 1978: 114). The sealed book contains ‘the very destinies of
the church’ which are ‘a sweet mystery’ and ‘a singular comfort to the
faithful’ (ibid. in Bauckham 1978: 303). The fron tispiece to the
Apocalypse in the Bible from Muiers-Granval, Tours (c.840), has the
Lion and the Lamb on either side of an empty throne and below them
the unveiling of the face of Moses by the living creatures, which
symbolize the gospels (in Van der Meer 1978: 75, 78). Charles Wesley
and Newton both iden tify the ‘scroll’ of Rev 5 with the book in Dan
12:4 (in Newport 2000: 128). The image of the scroll also influenced
poets like Shelley and Blake. Shelley describes religion as ‘a book
sealed’ (‘England in 1819’, line 11 in Paley 1999: 234), while for Blake
the unsealing of the book is an indication of the moment when the
false god of religion, law and hierarchy begins his tyrannous rule (‘For
Urizen unclasped his book’, Europe 12.4 in Paley 1999: 66).
Joachim had two ways of interpreting the seal visions: as a
description of events from the time of the patriarch Jacob to the
Roman conquest of Israel, and as a portrayal of events beginning with
the lifetime of Jesus. Seven periods or ‘seals’ form the old
dispensation, with seven parallel periods in the new dis pensation. In
the sealed book, the whole of history is comprehended, and no one
can loose its seals save the Lion of Judah (in Reeves and
Hirsch-Reich 1972: 5–6). The Lion of Judah has been a potent image
for Rastafarians, along with Rev 14:7 and 19:16 (in Barrett 1977:
104–5).

‘I began to weep bitterly’ (5:4)

The weeping of the seer finds a possible echo in the mystical writer
Margery Kempe, who repeatedly writes of ‘visionary’ weeping, for her
sins, for her bad attitude to God in the past, and when she
contemplates the passion or sees the eucharist (Kempe 1985: 291; cf.
Taves 1999: 111–12). Similar emotion and sensory perception are
portrayed in this description of the Beguin visionary Na Prous Boneta:
The Lord had given birth to her in the spirit and given her three gifts: the
gift of tears or weeping whenever she stood at the aforementioned
sepulchre; a greater
72 Revelation 5

fragrance or odor than she had ever before smelled; and a gentle,
sweet warmth as if a mantle had been thrown over her shoulders and
wrapped around her. (in May 1965: 477–500; cf. Burr 2001: 230–6)

The Lion and the Lamb (5:5–7)

Not surprisingly, commentators see Jesus as the slain Lamb.

According to Ire naeus, he is the only one who can see God and open
the book (AH iv.20.2, 11). Hippolytus, like Victorinus, understands the
sealed book as the Old Testament prefigurations (Daniel 20), which the
Lamb opens so that the things spoken of him in secret might be
‘proclaimed from the housetops’ (cf. Luke 12:3). Accord ing to Cyprian,
John sees the moment of the passion of Christ (Test. 11.15). Hildegard
writes of seeing ‘The Son of God, the strong Lion, who crushed fatal
infidelity by the shining light of faith.’ She emphasizes apocalyptic
insight into the meaning of history: ‘for it is by great fortitude that
people believe through counsel what they cannot see with their bodily
sight’ (Scivias iii.8.15, Hart and Bishop edn 438). According to
Bullinger, the receipt by the Lamb of the
scroll in 5:7 means his receipt from God the Father of all power, both
in heaven and in earth, an act which is a source of comfort (A
Hundred Sermons 160 in Bauckham 1978: 303, 114–15).
The Scofield Reference Bible links this enthronement scene with
Dan 7:13–14, noting that the Apocalypse adds what was hidden from
Daniel: namely, that ‘the kings and priests of the church age are to be
associated with the Son of Man, the Lamb as it had been slain, in his
reign on the earth’ (Rev 5:9–10, Scofield 1917: 910, 1335–6). David
Koresh seems to have thought of himself as the ‘Lamb’ who had the
power to unseal the seven seals (in Newport 2000: 222; cf. Ralph
Durden at the end of the sixteenth century, in Bauckham 1978:
188–91).
In a passage which is probably better known than any passage in
the Apoc alypse (at least in the English-speaking world), William Blake
uses the image of the Lamb in an evocation of a better world and a
prophetic challenge to create it. It occurs in a preface found in some
versions of his little known poem Milton (sometimes known as
‘Jerusalem’, though it is to be distinguished from the later poem of the
 same name):

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!
Revelation 5 73

And did the Countenance Divine,

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O Clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.
Would to God that all the Lord’s people
were Prophets.
Numbers xi. 29v

Here several themes of the Apocalypse are brought together. The

New Jerusalem of Rev 21 is not something remote or far off, but a
present possibil ity; it may be built in England’s ‘green & pleasant
land’. There is no disjunc tion between human activity and divine
activity, no sense of ‘leaving it all to God’. For Blake prophecy is not
just a thing of the past but is the present voca tion of all God’s people.
The Lamb appears in several other poems of Blake, most
accessibly in his Songs of Innocence and Experience. Just as in Rev 5
the sharp juxtaposition of the Lion of Judah and the Lamb that was
slain challenges assumptions about the character of the Messiah, so
Blake complements Christ’s mercy in ‘The Lamb’ with his justice in
‘The Tyger [sic]’. The poem presents the contrast con fronting us all as
we wrestle with the ‘contraries’ of life. The coming of Christ heralds not
only the blissful salvation of the Lamb but also the wrath of the Tyger
(Songs of Experience).
In Jerusalem, the last of Blake’s major poems, the Lamb appears
frequently as the goal from which Albion (who symbolizes the
inhabitants of Britain) is alienated (7.59, 67, 69; 9.9; 12.40; 18.27;
20.9, 39; 24.2, 50, 53; 25; 27.6, 18, 65, 94; 36[40].51; 38[43].30;
40[45].15; 41[46].28; 50.10, 24, 30; 59.49; 60.38, 50; 62.30; 73.18; 77;
78.13–14, 18–19; 79.41, 51; 80.30, 65, 77; 82.7, 54; 83.15; 88.49–54;
alternative plate numbers in brackets). Blake’s poem, like the
Apocalypse itself, is a complex unfolding of the state of alienation and
the long tortuous path to redemption, for which he longs: ‘Recieve the
Lamb of God to dwell/In England’s green & pleasant bowers’
(Jerusalem 77). Blake contrasts the Lamb with the ‘Abomination of
desolation’ (Jerusalem 7:69; cf. Dan 9:27; Mark 13:14). The Lamb
offers an ever-present possibility for moral renewal, though
74 Revelation 5

the inhabitants of Britain are prevented from reaching that goal by their
inability to recognize their true destiny (Jerusalem 9:9). Blake saw
Jerusalem and the way of the Lamb emerging in his own work and
abode in LAMBeth (Jerusalem 12:40). Albion’s alienation from its true
vocation is so far advanced that traces of the Lamb’s presence are
virtually extinguished (Jerusalem 24:80). In Jerusalem 27:6 the Lamb
appears along with the Bride (see Rev 21:2). The sense of an
apocalyptic struggle in which the Lamb is liberator and also the target
of superhuman forces (as in Rev 5 and 17:14) is never far from Blake’s
poetic imagination (cf. Jerusalem 78:13–19). It is the prophet’s role
(and Blake certainly saw himself as a prophet) to hammer out a way of
justice as a herald to the Lamb of God (Jerusalem 88:49–54).
John Howard Yoder, in a classic statement of an Anabaptist position
which expresses a countercultural politics, offers Rev 5 as the
paradigm for a Christian attitude to history (Yoder 1972: 237; cf. Pipkin
1989: 69–76; McClendon 1994: 97–102). What Rev 5 proclaims is the
politics of the Lamb. John sheds tears in the face of the world’s
injustice, but the meaning of history is the formation, around the Lamb
that was slain, of a new human race, international in character and
determined not by Caesar’s rule, which is based on violence (cf.
Wengst 1987). The Lamb’s suffering for the cause of right overturns
the principalities and powers, as is stated in the hymnic proclama tion
in 5:9 which heralds the beginning of a new politics (Yoder in Pipkin
1989: 73–5).

Artistic representations of the Lamb

Many Beatus manuscripts contain lively illustrations of the Lamb in the

midst of the throne. The Pierpont Morgan Beatus has the Lamb
bearing a cross in the centre of a large circle, surrounded by the four
living creatures (MS 644 (c.950) in Grubb 1997: 15). In van Eyck’s
painting The Mystical Lamb (1432), St Bavo, Ghent, in Seidel in
McGinn 2000: 497–500), following in the tradition of Tyconius (see
 above, 16), the division between heaven and earth is tran scended in
the eucharistic feast. The Lamb in the midst of the throne is found on
an altar on earth (cf. the Bamberg Bible, fol. 339v, where the Lamb is
jux taposed with a chalice). In his illustrations of the Apocalypse,
Dürer brilliantly evokes the stark contrast between an idyllic earth and
the apocalyptic, other worldly, complexity of the heavenly scene (in
Smith 2000: 20).
Given the supreme importance of the Lamb within the framework of
Blake’s long poem Jerusalem, it has a rather subordinate role in his
picture The Twenty Four Elders (Tate Gallery, London). It evokes Rev
4 especially (the rainbow, the worship of the elders and the four living
creatures around the throne), but in
Revelation 5 75

a prominent position, though hardly highlighted, is a sleeping lamb.

Placed immediately before the enthroned God, the Lamb has a sealed
scroll in his right hand.

The seven spirits and the harp (5:6, 8)

The seven spirits of 5:6 are compared by Irenaeus to a candelabrum,

which illuminates the heavens. When they are given to the Son, all
heavenly creatures praise God as creator and sender of the Son
(Dem. 9). Incense is offered to the slain Lamb in the midst of the
throne (AH iii. 17.6; cf. Rev 7:17). The motif of seven eyes sent into all
the world in 5:6 (which draws on verses like Zech 4:4) is taken up by
Milton in Paradise Lost iii.534. For Victorinus, the harp of 5:8, which
has strings stretched across a wooden frame, is a sign of the flesh of
Christ stretched upon the wood of the Cross (1916: 66.11–13).

‘they will reign on earth’ (5:10)

The this-worldly promise in ‘they will reign on earth’ is picked up in the

description of the millennial kingdom in 20:4–6 (see commentary
thereon). This represents a markedly different kind of eschatology
from the mainstream Christian tradition: a hope for this world rather
than some transcendent realm (Cohn 1957; Rowland 1988; Bradstock
and Rowland 2002). It is pointedly rejected by the Geneva Bible’s
marginal gloss: the saints will reign, but ‘Not cor porally’. This
exemplifies a fundamental division within the Christian world, ancient
and modern, which does not run along ecclesiastical or denomina
tional lines but concerns whether Christians believe that the kingdom
of God involves a hope for the transformation of this world and its
structures. A re emphasis on the millennium has been a feature of
some modern systematic theology (Moltmann 1996: 129–256).

Praise of the Lamb (5.11–13)

Milton links this heavenly scene with other biblical verses like Ps 68 to
evoke the blessing of the Son of God (Paradise Lost iv.767–70,
vi.886; xi.24). The hymn of 5:12, ‘Worthy is the Lamb . . . to receive
power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and
blessing’ is set to music in Handel’s Messiah, as is the praise of
5:13,‘blessing and honour, glory and power be unto Him’. In an
African-American spiritual, the singer imagines joining the heavenly
praises:
76 Revelation 5

Want to go to heab’n, when I die...

To see God’s bleedin’ Lam’...
Den you raise yo’ voice up higher...
an’ you jine dat heab’nly choir...
To see God’s bleedin’ Lam’.
(Johnson and Johnson 1954:
ii.152–4; cf. references to the Lamb
in i.144, 173; ii.114–15, 138–9)